Visa has launched a new hi-tech card with a built-in screen and numeric keypad to help secure online transactions.
The Visa CodeSure card is the size of a normal credit card, but includes an LCD screen and a tiny keyboard, powered by a battery that is supposed to last 3 years – an average lifespan for a normal plastic credit card. Visa say they’ve tested the durability of the card and it should be able to withstand normal wear and tear, but I’d love to see how it would get on being sat on day after day whilst in my wallet.
So what’s the point of the card? Well, it’s intended to replace those cumbersome card readers that some online banking customers now have to use.
Here’s how it works:
- When shopping online or logging in to an online banking service, the cardholder activates the authentication process by pressing the “Verified by Visa†option button on the card’s keypad.
- When prompted, the consumer inputs their PIN into the keypad embedded in the card.
- A unique one-time-passcode appears on the card’s display, which is then used by the cardholder to authenticate a normal Verified by Visa transaction.
And here’s a couple of videos showing the CodeSure card in action. The first shows a traditional online purchase being verified:
And the second shows how it can be used to verify a caller from a bank is who they say they are:
Whilst it’s a nifty bit of kit, I wonder whether the banks and card companies are looking at mobile phones as an answer to this sort of problem in the future – rather than using separate bits of kit or building more and more functionality into the cards themselves, could they not utilise the advancing technology in mobile phones to verify transactions?
I think this is a fantastic idea! Granted, at some point in the future we will have an all in one device that is our phone, keys, banking device and proof of identification. However in the interim I think this fits the bill very well. The number of people who lose or misplace their card readers for online payments is untrue, however folk seldom lose their “flexible friends”, with that in mind this seems a perfect solution, albeit temporary.
The banks need to roll this out for everyone asap. This clearly will impact over the phone and internet fraud in a big way and make indentity theft a lot more difficult for criminals.